The Adventures of Richard & Bronte.: crater lakes and portland

Tuesday 1st June

Well today we got up early and headed for the Multnomah Falls which is in the Mount Hood National Park. It was about 50kms east of Portland. We hit the road in the new Mustang with no weird noises coming from the back. Took the exit from the freeway and was soon on the Historic Columbia River Highway. The first stop was the Wahkeena Falls, it was really nice and there was a short walking trail which took us to a bridge that cut across the front of the water fall. These falls are 240 feet high and very pretty to look at. All the trees and stuff around the park were so green and lush and made everything look so good. Back in the car and a little bit further east and we came to the Multnomah Falls visitor centre. Took the walk to the base of the falls. This was spectacular, it is 620 feet tall and is the second biggest, year round water falls in the US. This also had a walkway up to the bridge that crossed over in front of the falls. We walked up and looked at the first part of the falls. It was pretty good and the view was magnificent.

From these falls we drove to Oneonta Tunnel that use to be part of the old roadway which is now not used. The tunnel was carved out of the rock in 1914 and was used up til 1948 when it was filled in with rock due to being unstable. Last year in February it was dug out and renewed to its former glory. We took a walk through it but its now closed to vehicular traffic. We then took the Historic Columbia River Highway west back towards Portland when we stumbled across Latourell Falls where we stopped and took some more photos.

From there we stumbled across Vista House which was built between 1916-1918 as a memorial to Oregon pioneers, as a comfort station for those traveling on the Historic Columbia River Highway and as an observatory. The octagonal stone structure towers 733 feet above the Columbia River. Vista House was closed for almost 5 years while an extensive restoration was completed, and was reopened in the summer of 2005. The views from the observatory out over the river were magical.

We then kept heading back to the city and stopped for lunch at Subway on the way. From there we went right into Downtown and parked the car and went to the Lan Su Chinese Gardens. These gardens are a traditional Chinese Garden built by the Chinese using all Chinese supplies shipped out from China just for this garden and only the plants were from Oregon. The garden was very pretty and was well worth the walk through to admire. Suzhou in China is the sister city with Portland and that is where the designer Kuang Zhen Yan comes from. The garden was only opened on 14th September 2000. By now it was 5.00 pm and it had started to rain so we made our way back to the car and then back to the motel. The road was bad due to the traffic and the wet roads and took us about an hour to go only 20kms. For dinner we decided to head out and have A & W. It was a double restaurant with KFC in it as well. The food was good but some street bum came in and was harassing customers and the staff and they had to call the police. He left before they got there.

Tomorrow we are heading to Seattle where we plan to stay for 2 nights.

lan su chinese gardens

chinese gardens

vista house

latourell falls

our new mustang

multnomah falls

close up!

wahkeena falls

further back on wahkeena falls

Monday 31st May

Today we decide to head from Medford to Crater Lakes which is a lake in a extinct volcano much like the blue lake in Mount Gambier. It was only 150kms away and was going to be a nice drive. Once we got to about 20kms away we started to get snow on the sides of the road. It started to feel like our trip to Yellowstone 2 years ago. We did know that some of the roads are still closed until further into summer because of the snow but still accessible. We arrived and took a park at the top only to find the whole place fogged in and misty raining. We still had a walk around on the snow and walked to the edge of the crater to look down to where the water should be, but we could see nothing but white. We drove to another location which was only a few hundred metres from the main carpark and that to was no better. While up at the snow we decided to put the roof of the car down just cause we can! It was COLD!

We hit the road again now to head through some of Deschutes National Park with a bit of a detour instead of heading straight to Portland Oregon. It was about another 500 kms but the scenery was very nice. We stopped off at a rest stop and saw a chipmunk eating a nut, he was so cute and we wanted to take him home. Towards the last couple of hundred kilometres we did get a fair bit of rain until we got back down from the mountains.

Got to the airport at Portland and spoke to Hertz about our noisy car. We had organised to swap it over for a new one. We now are the proud owners of a gunmetal grey Mustang which has a couple of extras on it. It is a far better car having only 59000kms on it rather than 80000kms like the white one.

From the airport we went to the motel which was only a couple of kms away and checked in. This motel had a nice pool and spa area. I went for a spa as I had a bit of a sore back and wanted to try and soothe it. After the spa we went out for dinner and had Ihop, mmm yummy, it's been a year since the last Ihop and it was good.

Tomorrow we are going to look around Portland as they have some really great waterfalls and gardens. There are a couple of national parks very close by which have some rather large mountains still covered in snow. Mt Hodd and Rainier National Park for example.